Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired
look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the
mustard-seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the
empty vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under
his arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his
servant into the hands of another canvasser.
Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it
came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention
and sympathy. He told it something like this:--
My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He
reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy.
In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my
servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous
gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in
one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you
too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I
reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the
heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic
taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making
collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu,
and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of
sympathy with this exquisite employment.
I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells;
another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and
refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's
priceless collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of
postage-stamps--and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit.
My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of.
You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon
became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his
great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant
leisure into a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and
he spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which
filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of
cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one--an antique,
and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector. My
uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell.
Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches
no value to a collection that is not complete. His great heart
breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems
unoccupied.
Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and
intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened;
his great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired
brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets
and other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the
factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well
as himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another
failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed
at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec
inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all
former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these
noble gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the
inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of
such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather
part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his
darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned
white as snow in a single night.
Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill
him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other
man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered
the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.
“Of what?” said I.
Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated
four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a
thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas;
his next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so
to speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which
reflected it having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a
cost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with
masonry, treble the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook
the job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled
this one. Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a
mother-in-law, but now it was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum.
Well, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barreled echoes,
scattered around over various states and territories; he got them
at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot. Next he bought a perfect
Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a fortune, I can tell
you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the scale of prices
is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact, the same
phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars over
and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or double-barreled
echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine hundred and
fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon-echo,
which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, and
cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the land in,
for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.
Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more
than a small way, for esthetic amusement.
Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain
of Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of
small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back
settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the
same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all
owned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis
owned the east hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso
owned the west hill; the swale between was the dividing-line. So while
my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and
eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill
for a shade over three million.
Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other.
There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward
a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!
You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that
nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be
nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but
the man said, “I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you
must take care of your own end yourself.”
Well, my uncle got an injunction put on him. The other man appealed and
fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme
Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of
the judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was
impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and
consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate,
because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable
from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not
property at all.
It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were
property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the
two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at
full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but
must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which
might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred
my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo,
without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part
of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of
course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred
defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo,
without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would give
consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from
its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied
up and unsalable.
A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and
the nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals,
came news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me
his sole heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The
thought surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will
to the earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read
it; then he sternly said, “Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless
you do in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast
collection of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is
scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American
continent; sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there
is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard
man, but I must look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo
which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which
was free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child,
and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus
wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry
my child to a beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your
mortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever.”
My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together
again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these
maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for
less money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle
ten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in
Texas, I will let you have for--
“Let me interrupt you,” I said. “My friend, I have not had a moment's
respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I
did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details;
I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison
which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of
useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I
would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I
would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to
sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on;
let us not have bloodshed.”
But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.
You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have
once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have
got to suffer defeat.
I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought
two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another,
which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said,
“She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down.”